At 12:23 a.m. local time, the game finally resumed play after a league-record four hours and six minutes of rain delay.

The game highlights courtesy of CarolinaRailhawks.com

And 43 minutes of regulation and three minutes of stoppage time later, the Railhawks walked off the WakeMed Soccer Park Field for the final time, having battled through a six-hour-long match to earn a 1-0 victory...

...On a goal in the 10th minute.

Railhawks' coach Colin Clarke was, understandably, a bit irritated:

Colin Clarke in postgame says there needs to be a #NASL cutoff for abandoning the match. Doesn't blame MN, says 4 hours is "just too much."

'Today was about really coming down and getting a deeper understanding of soccer in this community,' Abbott said. 'It wasn't a sort of checklist-type of exercise on the road to making an expansion decision. It was an opportunity to learn more about this community and what's happening here in soccer.'"

Luke DeCock of the Raleigh News & Observeralso articulated what has become a passionate soccer following in the Triangle:

"The only question MLS should be asking with regard to the Triangle is not “if?” or “how?” but merely “when?” There are legitimate questions to be asked, about ownership and facilities, and some serious hurdles to clear, but this market is as good a fit for MLS as MLS is for this market.

The summer MLS season doesn’t coincide with college football, college basketball or the NHL; with 17 home dates, MLS is a better fit for this area’s population than baseball and there are few markets in the country with more interest in the sport at every level than the Triangle."

There are certainly a number of indicators around the Raleigh area that could point towards an MLS franchise.

The Railhawks ranked third in NASL in 2011 with an average attendance of just 3,353, but drew a record sellout crowd of 7,939 in a match against a mostly-reserve L.A. Galaxy squad during the Lamar Hunt US Open Cup in May. The home side scored twice in the game's final 16 minutes to win, 2-1.

Should the Raleigh area receive an MLS expansion franchise?

Yes

No

Undecided

WakeMed Soccer Park, the club's current home, is also undergoing a $6.3 million grandstand expansion to increase capacity from 7,000 to 10,000 by later this summer.

With a larger, more up-to-date stadium and weekly showdowns with MLS teams and their starting players, the Triangle's soccer interest could continue to skyrocket with the blessing of an expansion franchise.

But the weather could also turn such an experiment sour.

Simply put, the MLS isn't too accustomed to thunderstorms. Of the league's 19 current cities with franchises, only four—Columbus, Kansas City, Dallas and Houston—fall in climates of moderate-to-high lightning density.

By comparison, per the National Weather Service, the next four days of Raleigh weather forecasts all include the words "T-storms," and each has a chance of rain of 30 percent or higher.

Over a three-and-a-half hour period—which fell right in the middle of the Railhawks' once-promising match—at least one lightning strike occurred within three miles of WakeMed Soccer Park every 10 minutes for over 200 consecutive minutes.